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Thursday, July 25, 2013

Iowa Rep. Steve King Explains Exactly How Republicans Feel About Hispanics – They Are Drug Mules

Exactly How Does This Help the GOP Attract Hispanic Voters?

[Update: Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor have both come out strong against Rep. King. They are to be congratulated, albeit a little late.]

A politician in a
safe seat is often able to speak more truthfully about what he thinks and
what his party stands for more than a politician who is more vulnerable or more
subject to national attention. Such is
the case with Iowa Republican Representative Steve King, who tells everyone exactly
what the party position is on Hispanics.

King says he didn’t make the remarks to incite controversy. | AP PhotoOf course not, what could be controversal about what he said in Republican circles?

“For
everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130
pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling
75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” King said. “Those people would be
legalized with the same act.”

Given a chance to backtrack on what is surely some of the
dumbest, cruelest and most insensitive remarks anyone has made during the debate on immigration, Mr. King
passed.

Rep. Steve King is defending his remarks that drew criticism from
his own party leadership that the children of some immigrants were being used
as drug mules.

“It’s not something that I’m making up,” Kingtold Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson. “This is real. We have
people that are mules, that are drug mules, that are hauling drugs across the
border and you can tell by their physical characteristics what they’ve been
doing for months, going through the desert with 75 pounds of drugs on their
back and if those who advocate for the DREAM Act, if they choose to
characterize this about valedictorians, I gave them a different image that we
need to be thinking about because we just simply can’t be passing legislation
looking only at one component of what would be millions of people.”

And to be fair there was an almost unheard of actual
criticism of Mr. King by a few of his party.
Here is what the leaders in the House said, and note that even Eric Cantor was apparently offended, and it is almost impossible for any conservative position to offend Eric Cantor.

“There can be honest disagreements about policy without using
hateful language,” Boehner said in his statement. “Everyone needs to remember
that.”

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the
second-ranking House Republican, said of King’s remarks: ”I strongly disagree
with his characterization of the children of immigrants and find the comments
inexcusable.” Cantor is working on a bill that would legalize young
undocumented immigrants.

But this is all the leadership of the House will do, after all, Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor
are not going to continue to condemn someone who speaks for the large majority of the
Republicans are they?

I also find it odd that an Iowa politician is an expert on people "hauling drugs across the border." Which border is he talking about? The Wisconsin border? The Canadian border? The border between fantasy and reality?